An athlete wins the Tour de France bicycle race after recovering from cancer. An actor becomes a film producer, lobbyist for spinal cord injuries, and a source of inspiration for thousands after becoming a quadriplegic from a horse riding accident.
A scientist from Cambridge makes incredible advances in black hole and relativity theories in spite of being unable to walk or talk due to Lou Gehrig’s disease.
From these people, we can all learn the importance of a positive attitude.
In 1977, I was going to college in Bloomington, Indiana. Things were going along as normally as they can in college, but I began to have problems standing up. Then I began falling down occasionally, then falling down more and more. But I was young, and didn’t want to admit that anything was wrong so didn’t do anything about this clumsiness.
After college, my first job was in Denver as a computer programmer. After about a year there, I became homesick and moved back to Indiana, again working in computer programming for various organizations.
I would like to use a passage from the book ‘The Tao of Pooh’ by Benjamin Hoff:
A saying from the area of Chinese medicine would be appropriate to mention here: ‘One disease long life, no disease, short life’. In other words, those who know what’s wrong with them and take care of themselves accordingly will tend to live a lot longer than those who consider themselves perfectly healthy and neglect their weaknesses. So in that sense at least, a weakness of some sort can do you a big favor, if you acknowledge that it’s there. The same goes for one’s limitations, whether Tiggers know it or not, and Tiggers usually don’t. That’s the trouble with Tiggers, they know they can do everything. Very unhealthy.
Once you face and understand your limitations, you can work with them, instead of having them work against you and get in your way, which is what they do when you ignore them, whether you realize it or not. And then you will find that, in many cases, your limitations can be your strengths.
Written by: Dave Mills
Edited by: Joan Wheele
Dave is one of our ferociously positive Lori’s Hands clients
